Lovesick
by Regency
Summary: AU. After Bernie's return from Kiev, Bernie and Serena don't immediately reconcile, but a sudden medical crisis forces them to face what losing one another might really mean.


Author: Regency

Title: Lovesick

Pairing: Bernie Wolfe/Serena Campbell

Warnings: semi-graphic descriptions of medical trauma, blood

Summary: _After Bernie's return from Kiev, Bernie and Serena don't immediately reconcile, but a sudden medical crisis forces them to face what losing one another might really mean._

Author's Notes: I love Berena. Come flail with me on tumblr at sententiousandbellicose.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from Holby City. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

* * *

Serena found Bernie on the roof four weeks later.

The sight of her in her dark blue coat and ridiculous fur hat made Bernie's heart thunder and her knees turn to soft butter. _Her skin had been so clammy, her chest so still._ Bernie took a deep drag of her cigarette and looked off into the distance as the other woman drew nearer.

"You're not due back for two weeks." She knew she'd reached the clipped, distant tone she aimed for when Serena's shoulders drew back and her spine stiffened as if readying for a fight. They were both on their guard now.

"I feel fine."

"I'm glad to hear that; however, I won't be signing off on your work return for a fortnight. You should go home."

Serena huffed. "I'm just about climbing the walls as it is."

"Are you eating?" She flicked ash from the end of her fag as an excuse not to read the lines on Serena's face, the greyish pallor not quite gone from her skin. The gauntness she had seen on returning from Ukraine but been afraid to question.

"Enough," Serena replied after a long, pregnant pause. Bernie knew instinctively that was a lie.

"Drinking?"

Serena smiled and Bernie's breath caught. "Not quite up to my old Shiraz-swilling ways just yet, but other than that-"

"Then you're not ready to come back."

Bernie stubbed out her cigarette and dug out another to light. Her chest felt tight for all the wrong reasons and she needed to keep her hands busy.

Serena narrowed her eyes at the gesture. "What happened to not smoking?"

"What happened to talking to your co-lead?"

"Bernie, what's this about?"

"I don't know, Serena. You're the one incapable of sharing." The hypocrisy of it burned in Bernie's mouth, only she didn't care enough to say sorry. She wanted Serena home and recuperating and safe. Bernie blinked behind her fringe, dispelling images of her bloody gloved hands and a relentless whine that could have, should have signified the end of Serena Campbell.

"I told you I didn't realize how serious it was until that morning."

"You went into cardiac arrest on AAU. From talking to collapsing to all but clinically dead in less than fifteen minutes by my reckoning. That doesn't usually just happen out of the blue."

Serena sighed deeply. "I mentioned I wasn't feeling well."

"You mentioned lost appetite. You mentioned stomach pain. You didn't say you'd been in pain for weeks, that you'd scarcely eaten in that time. Certainly hadn't been imbibing. Were barely sleeping. Had blood-tinged vomit. That was information I needed to know, as your co-lead and as your friend. I _thought_ we were still friends." That conversation had been painful, too much left unsaid in the margins, but it had been enough to save them. Bernie had thought so, anyway.

"We were. We _are."_

"Friend don't make friends shock each other back to life on two separate occasions. I was covered in your blood. Two perforated ulcers, Serena? You're a brilliant surgeon, that doesn't just happen." Her voice had grown ragged and thin, she was so near to shouting. She had to take a puff of her cigarette to calm down. She was furious and sad, keyed up and waiting for the other shoe to fall and steal the one person she wanted most and least ought to have.

Serena was looking beyond her when Bernie got up the courage to glance at her again. Against the backdrop of concrete and sky, Serena looked diminished, her face slightly waxen, her lips colorless despite a dab of lipstick. Bernie wanted to catch her wrist and take her pulse to be sure she still had one.

"I was handling it, Bernie. I was going to take time off to see my GP and be treated. I told you that."

"You could have died."

"Ah, but I had a very good doctor." She winked and Bernie's lips twisted despite the chill that ran down her spine. They had come so close to never having another conversation like this.

"Five minutes. That's how long you were out for. Three in theater, two on the ward. Took me that long to get your heart beating again. And I keep seeing you, Serena. There you are in all my dreams, dying under _my_ hands, blood loss _catastrophic_. Now there are five minutes when I know what it's like to live in a world without you. It was worse than Kiev and I didn't think anything could be worse than that."

Serena turned away. "I said-"

"Which means bugger all when I can't stop seeing you up on that trolley writhing in agony. I see the light go out in your eyes and you flatline. That's my nights now."

Serena's expression softened into one of sympathy, and it was Bernie's go to turn her back. Serena's hand was a reassuring weight between her shoulder blades. _At least she's real._ Bernie couldn't count how many nights she'd woken up to nothing _real._

"You should talk to someone. It-what happened with me may be exacerbating your PSTD."

Bernie crushed her pack of cigarettes in an unsteady fist. She wanted to throw it from the roof, but she'd just have to retrieve it later on and she was too drained for the journey down and back. Everything since that day seemed to take twice the energy she had.

"I don't need to be psychoanalyzed, I need you to go home and come back when you're 100%. I'll take care of AAU."

"I'm good enough for paperwork, which you aren't, and I am _sick_ of sitting at home."

"Well, that's too bad since I'm not prepared to go another round if you overexert yourself and land back in theater." She softened her tone at Serena fairly blanching at the possibility. "It scares the F1s, and you know it doesn't take much."

Serena acquiesced with a throaty chuckle. "Fine, fine. I'm sure Jason will be delighted."

"He'd be delighted if all were back to normal. He's chafing at the change in routine." He was trying not to show fear for Serena's sake. Bernie saw through all his attempts and sympathized with every one. Serena was the center of her world, too.

"I couldn't be more aware of that, believe me. I'm getting it day and night."

"I could talk to him for you."

"No need. He means well. He frets because he cares."

" _I_ care," Bernie murmured without intending.

Serena exhaled sharply, something unknowable on her lips before she shook her head and seemed to move on to the next acceptable reply. "I know you do, Bernie."

"Do you?"

The days before Serena's collapse had been nothing but loaded silences filled with unknowable utterances. It had driven Bernie spare, then; in this moment, it became intolerable. Bernie could maintain the pretense of wanting to leave it, them, in theater and in Kiev, no longer. She reached for Serena's hand, felt the coolness of it against hers and the twitch of longing to touch her back that Serena almost palpably repressed. She held on until Serena gave in with a harrumph and laced their fingers together. The rush of skin to skin contact was instantly more addicting than nicotine; headier, as well. Bernie's nerves tingled in anticipation. Why hadn't she touched her like this before? _Fear, again._

Bernie silently counted the strong flutters of Serena's pulse against her own. "You should have told me you were in pain."

Serena sniffed and cleared her throat, clinging to her composure by a thread Bernie could almost see. "Didn't I?"

There had been indications that Serena wasn't well, yet Bernie had kept her distance, too leery of giving away her lingering romantic feelings to bridge the veritable canyon that had grown between them. And so they had both suffered in silence. "I didn't want to rock the boat and in doing that I left you stranded. I didn't have your back. I messed everything up. I'm so...sorry."

Serena patted the back of her hand. "We can draw a veil over that, too." Somehow Serena's willingness to gloss over her most recent transgressions only worsened them in Bernie's eyes.

"What happened to the queen of take-it-to-the-grave grudges?"

"She found her exception."

"I don't want to be the exception if it leads us here." Bernie gazed down at their linked hands, wishing every day could be like this. "Just...talk to me. Even if it's uncomfortable." Which it undoubtedly would be. "Even if you think I won't care, though I'll _always_ care, tell me how to help. We're in this together now."

"For AAU?"

"For life." Bernie hesitated at Serena's hopeful look. "I lost you for five hellish minutes. I didn't know anything, couldn't imagine what the future looked like without you in it. It was..." Bernie licked her lips, tried so hard not to relive it in her mind as she had for days on end. "It was unbearable. I don't want to feel that horrible, empty, lonely feeling ever again."

"I'm not going anywhere, you don't need to worry. And if I need to, I know I can talk to you." Serena's eyes were glassy with unshed tears. Bernie hated that she'd done that. That wasn't what love was about.

"I know why you didn't say anything. You thought I'd cut and run if things got complicated. Fair enough. I shouldn't have buggered off to Ukraine. I shouldn't have let this distance between us grow because I was scared of destroying our friendship, the way I have too many others. I should have-I should have told you I loved you when I first got home."

"You love me?"

Bernie didn't let the genuine surprise on Serena's face stymie her. "You know I do." A disbelieving eyebrow left Bernie stammering. "Y-you must know that by now."

"You have a funny way of showing it." Bernie had let radio silence speak for her for too long.

"Saving your life wasn't enough?"

"You save lives every day," Serena retorted with no small amount of pride.

"Yours was different. You're different." Bernie rubbed a callused thumb over the inside of Serena's wrist to get a more accurate pulse rate. It was racing. "I love you. Have done for months now. I know I've done the wrong things, I've said the wrong things, but I don't want to lose you, not to my own stupid choices, not to anything else. I'll do whatever it takes to convince you I'm telling the truth."

Bernie cupped Serena's face in her palm, kissed her as fiercely as she loved her, with all the fight in her, with all her curiosity and restrained lust. She unclasped their joined hands to pull Serena nearer by the small of her back, to brush the wispy hair at the nape of her neck. The list of all she wanted to touch went on and on. There was no part of Serena Bernie wouldn't glut herself on if Serena offered it; all that self-denial and it had only left her starving. Serena swayed between points of contact-Bernie's arm around her waist, under her coat, the scrape of her nails up her side, her lips' bruising assault on her mouth-only to be left blinking in dazed startlement when Bernie finally let her go.

"And here I thought it was me who'd have to do the convincing." She ran her tongue over her lips, lipstick gone. Bernie kissed her again, this time softer, promising. Bernie was an action woman, that was what counted, but the words would come. They had to.

"About time I started doing the heavy lifting, don't you think?" Sentiment aside, Bernie could name at least three surfaces in AAU alone that would support their combined weight. She had thought of shamefully little else during her lonely nights in Ukraine.

"I won't be lifting much for some time yet; some assistance wouldn't go amiss." Serena's eyes twinkled in smug merriment as though she knew just where Bernie's mind had gone.

"Well, you're still off-rota for the next two weeks, but nothing says you have to spend them alone. What do you say we spend that time 'uplifting' each other?" Bernie was snorting with unbecoming laughter before she'd even gotten the whole thing out; Serena was kissing her before her next breath. A slender hand buried in Bernie's hair, the other cupping her cheek, Serena poured every ounce of her before unacknowledged love into it, Bernice could tell. That was Serena; heart all in even when it hurt. Bernie loved her beyond words.

They parted, noses brushing. Their foreheads touched, coming to rest together as they breathed a shared sigh of relief. They had survived this. _Please let us survive everything else._

"I say, Major Wolfe, I thought you'd never ask."


End file.
